The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-06-22
i" COrners.v


The distinction between legitimate
speculation and gambling in business
is once more attracting attention.
There is wide difference between
the two, though a superficial view con-
dennis all speculation. But the specu-
lator does a legitimate business who
moves commodities from where they
abound to where they are scarce, on a
calculation of profit, and the effect is
to equalize values, prevent a glut and
loss in one place and scarcity and suf-
fering in another. But gambling in
business is another affair entirely
1t is plundering one man to enrich
another; it employs "A large body of
men in busy ideness, so to speak,
adding nothing to the general wealth
of the country and leading its victims
to distress and bankruptcy. This sort
of business, which is always prominent
in stock exchanges, is now applied to
merchandise extensively. Men sell
much in excess of what they have got,
and what they do not intend to have,
in the nomenclature of margins, :"
"options,' futures" corners"
etc., and if margins or differences are
paid on these paper contracts what
one man gains another loses, as in any
other sort of gambling.
The most Objectionable form of this
illegitimate speculation is that in the
necessaries of life. If only the imme-
date operators in these speculative
movements felt their consequences
there would be little occasion for SYM
pathy, but the fictitious price made by
the syndicates who corner" COM
modities is too often made a real price
to consumers. Other results are dan
gerous decentralization of business, ruin
to many dealers engaged in legitimate
business transactions, and the stimulus
given to the gambling spirit, whose
subtle influence permeates every branch
of human industry and achievement.
For some time past spectators in
New York have been cornering coffee.
while spectators in Chicago have been
cornering wheat. Last week the bot
tom was knocked out of both of these
corners. Coffee, which had been car
ried up to thirty cents per pound, fell
to seventeen, and wheat fell seventeen
cents in one day. There has since
been some recovery in prices, but it
looks as though the country was getting
too big to allow few spectators in
any one or half dozen cities to sus-
tain corner successfully for any length
of time. The spectators are liable to
get overloaded, and then the crash can
not be long delayed. But the collapse
of the corner in coffee was probably
caused by favorable reports of the Bra
lillian coffee crop. Though the earlier
reports were unfavorable and there was
a lighter crop than the average on ac-
count of the depression in prices last
year and reduced acreage, there has
been no reasons for the rapid advance
in price except purely speculative ones.
Pending the manipulations of specula-
tors cOffee-consumers have had to pay
the fictitious prices to large amount.
The results of the speculation have
been disastrous to many, but we do
not imagine that the public will feel
any sympathy for the INSCRIPTIONS
operators.
The Chicago wheat corner broke
down because the load became too
heavy for the spectators to carry. 1t
appears that while they were right in
their calculation of large foreign de-
mand for wheat, they had underes-
timated wildly in regard to the quantity
available in this country for export.
BY buying up all the wheat stored in
Chicago and all the storage room they
hoped to control the market in
definitely, but wheat kept coming in
great quantities until the visible sup
ply exceeded forty million bushels,
and on the day of the break there were
one thousand carloads more to be re-
ceived at Chicago. In this case, while
the prices of wheat were advanced for
Chicago and Milwaukee, the price of
wheat in the rest of the country was
following normal course. The worst
effects of the corner are the retention
of much wheat at home which might
have been marketed abroad, if prices
had not been raised above their proper
level, and considerable injury to the
legitimate trade of Chicago.